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Scrubby foliage conceal the entryway. A sloping wooden passageway descends to a well-illuminated reception area. Inside lies a surgery unit, outfitted with gurneys, heart rate sensors and breathing machines. Plus cabinets full of medical equipment, drugs and neat piles of extra garments. Within a break area with a laundry appliance and hot water heater, doctors keep an eye on a display. It shows the movements of enemy spy drones as they weave in the air above.

Medical staff at an underground medical center look at a screen showing Russian suicide and surveillance UAVs in the region.

Welcome to Ukraine’s secret underground hospital. This center opened in the eighth month and is the second such installation, situated in the eastern part of the country not far from the combat zone and the urban area of Pokrovsk in the Donetsk region. “Our facility sits six meters under the earth. This is the most secure method of providing help to our injured military personnel. It also ensures medical personnel safe,” stated the facility's lead doctor, Major Oleksandr Holovashchenko.

This medical station handles 30-40 casualties a day. Their conditions vary. Some have devastating limb trauma necessitating amputations, or serious abdominal injuries. Some patients can walk. Almost all are the victims of enemy FPV drones, which drop explosives with lethal accuracy. “Ninety per cent of our cases are from first-person view drones. We see few gunshot wounds. It’s an age of drones and a different kind of conflict,” the doctor said.

Maj the senior surgeon at the subterranean facility for caring for wounded soldiers in eastern Ukraine.

During one day last week, three military members limped into the facility. The least severely hurt, 28-year-old one soldier, said an first-person view drone blast had ripped a minor wound in his limb. “War is horrific. The guy next to me, Vasyl, was killed,” he said. “He collapsed. Subsequently the Russians dropped a another explosive on him.” He added: “All structures in the village is demolished. We see drones all around and casualties. Our side's and the enemy's.”

Dvorskyi explained his unit endured over a month in a forest area near Pokrovsk, which Russia has been trying to seize since last year. Sole access to reach their position was by walking. Necessary provisions arrived by drone: food and water. Seven days following he was hurt, he walked 5km (about 3 miles), requiring three hours, to where an military transport was able to evacuate him. At the clinic, a medic assessed his physical condition. Following care, a medical attendant provided him with fresh civilian clothes: a shirt and a pair of pale jeans.

The soldier, twenty-eight, said a first-person view aerial device caused a small hole in his leg.

A different casualty, 38-year-old a serviceman, said a UAV explosion had left him with concussion. “I was in a dugout. Suddenly it became black. I lost sensation anything or any sound,” he explained. “I think I was lucky to survive. My cousin has been killed. We face continuous detonations.” A construction worker employed in a neighboring country, he said he had returned to his homeland and volunteered to fight days before the Russian leader's large-scale attack in early 2022.

Another military member, Taras Mykolaichuk, had been struck in the upper body. He expressed pain as medical staff laid him on a bed, took off a bloody bandage and cleaned his two-day-old shrapnel wound. Covered in a foil blanket, he used a mobile phone to ring his sister. “A fragment of artillery struck me. It was a ricochet. My condition is stable,” he told her. What comes next for him? “To get better. That will take a few months. Subsequently, to go back to my military group. Our forces has to protect our nation,” he said.

Medical staff treat Taras Mykolaichuk, who was injured in the dorsal area by a piece of mortar.

Over the past years, Russia has repeatedly targeted hospitals, health facilities, obstetric units and ambulances. Per international monitors, over two hundred health workers have been fatally attacked in almost two thousand attacks. This subterranean hospital is constructed from multiple steel bunkers, with wooden supports, earth and sand laid on top reaching the surface. It can withstand impacts from large-caliber artillery shells and even multiple 8kg TNT charges released by aerial means.

The Ukrainian steel and mining company, which funded the building, intends to build 20 facilities in all. A senior official of Ukraine’s national security council and ex- defence minister, Rustem Umerov, said they would be “critically essential for preserving the lives of our military and supporting troops on the battlefront.” The company described the initiative as the “largest-scale and challenging” it had undertaken since Russia’s military offensive.

An example of the centre’s surgical rooms.

The surgeon, explained some wounded soldiers had to endure delays hours or even multiple days before they could be evacuated because of the threat of air assaults. “Our facility received a pair of critically ill patients who came at the early hours. It was necessary to carry out a removal of both limbs on one of them. His bleeding control device had been applied for such an extended period there was no other option.” What is his method with severe operations? “I’ve been healthcare for two decades. You have to concentrate,” he said.

Orderlies wheeled the soldier up the tunnel and into an emergency vehicle. The transport was parked under a bush. The patient and the two other soldiers were transferred to the urban center of a major city for additional medical care. The underground medical team took a break. The facility's ginger cat, the mascot, walked toward the entrance to await the next arrivals. “We are open 24 hours a day,” the surgeon said. “It doesn’t stop.”